


Elsewhere Anchises

by wreathed



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bruises, Choking, Clergy, High Anglicanism, London, M/M, Masochism, No Sex, Nobody comes, Post-Canon, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:21:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29411865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreathed/pseuds/wreathed
Summary: The expedition's sole survivors meet in Pimlico. For the prompt ‘After The Expedition’.
Relationships: Francis Crozier/Edward Little
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16
Collections: The Terror Rarepair Week 2021





	Elsewhere Anchises

The neat rows of newly built houses that criss-cross Pimlico, ice white stucco gleaming in the sunshine, give way to St Gabriel’s: fresh sandy-coloured stone and undamaged stained glass. Even after a return of close to a decade, the teeming press of every great building in London being so cheek by jowl is a surprise still to Edward: the sheer engineered, civilised, crowing _achievement_ of it.

How little they all know. But there is one man other than himself left alive who know how it is to look to the horizon and see nothing and no-one, over and over, and Edward has come to this place because he has tracked down the elusive Captain Crozier at last.

How can he manage to be thrilled to find himself alive when he knows he does not merit it? So much of the time he has been undeservedly gifted had already slipped from his grasp. He holds insufficient funds to be a proper country gentleman, but has, like Crozier, found himself unable to return to the sea. He’d ought to have married, but has not done so. Instead, whenever in the city, he has returned to old half-pay habits and intensified them. His body, Edward has found, does not heal like new as well as it once had.

Inside the church, bright white columns soar upwards to the ceiling, surrounding like a ribcage everything within. At this hour there are few souls bar the clergyman, who looks lost in thought staring straight through the Book of Common Prayer that has been left askew on one of the many empty pews. One of his sleeves covers an amputation made at the wrist.

“Good afternoon, sir.” Edward’s new shoes make too much noise on the tiled floor. He smiles, hat clasped tightly in both hands. He has worn the best he has, as though Crozier has only ever seen him stiff and stern and fine in a glass plate image. Crozier knows far worse than that.

Immediately he feels Crozier’s eyes rest on his face. Evidence of the punctures made there for those chains remain, but Edward is not typically in the company of someone understands the marks’ origins. 

“Edward,” Crozier says, pale with shock but, Edward fancies, pleased overall all the same. He has a new uniform now: all black, bar the flash of white at his neck like a chirping ring ouzel.

“I thought you would be somewhere quieter,” Edward admits.

“Quiet, but not too quiet, here,” Crozier tells him. “I wanted somewhere brand new, no-one’s legacy to live up to. And,” he adds, an eyebrow raised. “Somewhere where nobody knew of me.”

“I had to see you,” Edward says, rushed enough for his words to approach becoming garbled, trying to not sound spurned.

Crozier does not reply, so Edward watches his face instead. He remains in appearance older than his years, but the aging process seems to have slowed down away from the turbulence of exploration. He looks well, you might say. He must have successfully managed to not return to alcohol, at least. Edward’s eyes flick to the altar and its handsome chalice, and Crozier doesn’t fail to notice him doing it.

“I only take the body at the Eucharist myself, not the blood; don’t fear for me,” Crozier says, one side of his mouth grimly rising to a lopsided smile, and Edward’s nausea threatens to overwhelm him. Body. The flesh. They’d never once discussed it.

“ _Why?_ ” Edward asks him, this battered, stoic, peaceful shape of a man in front of him. They had once been somewhere godless, after all. “Why all this?”

“My options were limited, after the court martial. I wondered how I could help people. I thought I could do some good assisting in the absolution of the sins of others,” Crozier says, a slight hoarseness colouring his voice. “With the happy side effect of meaning I spend less time endlessly going over my own.”

Edward blinks. Nausea creeps back into the aperture of his throat. All of a sudden he cannot remember why he has come, what had been his plan.

“But tell me of yourself as you are now,” Crozier continues, clapping his good hand on Edward’s shoulder — Edward winces — in a way that would look overfamiliar had anyone been watching. “Have you found yourself a living? Have you a good wife?”

“Not even a bad one, sir,” Edward tells him without levity.

“You know, perhaps you shouldn’t address me—”

“I would still call you ‘sir’,” Edward says despondently. “But then we are good Christians, not like those Fenians over the water — at least I am not to call you Father!” He means it as a joke, but it does not come across how he had wanted it to. “Sir.”

“It is good to see you,” Crozier tells him, eyes kind and the sentiment clearly meant, and yet there is something inconclusive in it, and he years for more.

“Will you hear me? In the sanctuary? My parents were High Churchmen; they would confess privately from time to time.”

“Lieutenant,” Crozier says, and Edward flinches: a method of address he has not heard for a long time now, and there is the absence of the crunch of shale underfoot that should go alongside it. “There are some things I would rather not go over, even now.”

“It’s not that.” Edward swallows, the entire pain of existence seeming to press into his tight throat. “It’s… since then. I have done things.”

“You can tell me now, here,” Crozier says, and for a moment it is as if they are in a far smaller and less ornate space, the wooden deck swaying familiarly under their feet, the expedition afloat and orderly and expectant. “I’ll not have you talk to the back of my head. Not you.”

The awful unsettled feeling returns: Crozier still commands him, as far as Edward is concerned. The urge to flee rushes through him, but then he thinks again of a moment years ago: a shaking, violent man beneath the timbers of their ship, watching pain be bestowed onto sinners with uncommon satisfaction.

“I… I cannot with good conscience go through life at ease. I have seen professionals. To treat me ill. Street names I’d best not say in this place.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t tell me any further,” Crozier frowns. “I want you to be well, Edward, and you deserve forgiveness, and I will give it to you, but—” 

“Examine for yourself,” Edward cries out, the echo still too quiet for them to be overheard, but the helplessness of him is clear for anyone to see. “And you can see how the hurt is what heals me!”

“The vestry,” Crozier says urgently, and leads him through the heavy door.

“What’s wrong with you?” Crozier asks when the door closes and seals them in the tiny room. “You would somehow survive what we did yet then obtain further pain for yourself, by choice? _Via purchase _?”__

__This is closer to what Edward had come to seek. He knew Crozier could not be all calm, not truly._ _

__“Have you had medical advice for wounds? For that reason, I will look at you. Come now, I have seen more of you, and worse.”_ _

__Trembling, Edward removes his dress coat, then pushes his stiff collar away from the nape of his neck. He feels hot with blood, a rush of arousal, but does not feel his skin flush. Crozier is looking at Edward so closely, making him feel like a slip of a thing._ _

__Crozier’s gasp when he sees the bruising there is a breath on the back of Edward’s neck._ _

__Edward swallows. He lets go of where he is pulling away the collar, and turns around to face Crozier again. “I don’t want healing. Don’t you see, I want to feel it! And I would have you do it to me, sir, if you could stand the imposition.”_ _

__He sees the contraction of Crozier’s throat as he swallows. “I could not bear to hurt a man now, Edward. Even if that’s what they wished. I have already caused too much pain, and I’m disappointed to hear that you do not think me changed.”_ _

__“Oh, but I have seen you in action. You were brought low, after that, but that was the drink and the desperate situation, sir, not your… sense of command. That raised you high. We all needed good discipline, I don’t care how the world would have it. What would they know?”_ _

__“That’s not who I am any more, Edward. I can hardly bear to think about it.”_ _

__Edward can’t hold back the clench of his jaw. He himself has thought of it often, so often, and for so long he has planned to make enquiries and find Crozier and ask him…_ _

__“Besides,” Crozier says, lopsided smile again, something approaching paternal. “How much damage could I do you with only one hand, eh?”_ _

__“Do you want me to go?” asks Edward, despondent. Of course Crozier has found him deviant and inappropriate, of course he would not touch him—_ _

__“Why don’t I listen?” Crozier says. “I will allow you, just this once, to exorcise what you must. Show me.”_ _

__Edward removes his cravat, tied high and tight, to reveal a wreath of bruises around his whole neck and watches Crozier blink back at him, troubled but soundless._ _

__He lets his fingers run over the newly revealed skin, enjoying the penitent feeling that passes through him at his own touch. He hasn’t examined himself since the events of the previous night and is shocked, twinned with a gruesome stab of sexual excitement, when he presses down on other parts of his body over his clothes — the middle of his back, the top of his thigh — at Crozier’s occasional instruction, and he is so covered in evidence of what’s been done to him. There must be marks everywhere._ _

__“Tell me what you can feel,” Crozier says evenly, close to disinterested._ _

__“Well. They didn't let me leave without something for me to remember, Edward says, laughing out of incredulous awkwardness, feeling wondrously light-headed._ _

__“Go on. If you’ve got me to this place,” Crozier says, still sounding unaffected. “I will listen, but not if you avoid the question.”_ _

__“There are scratches on my thighs,” Edward manages to say, his hand over his finely woven trouser fabric. His own hand running up his thigh, feeling the pinprick gouges and raised lines, is enough to have himself fill out with unwise and inopportune interest, but if it is noticed it is not commented upon._ _

__“And how did those get there?” Crozier asks._ _

__“Fingernails.”_ _

__“Speak up, Edward.”_ _

__Edward squeezes his eyes closed, never so acutely aware of himself. “Fingernails. And my forearm is bruised from being grabbed. And if I put my hand to my back—”_ _

__“What now? Edward, promise me you’re well.”_ _

__“Lashed,” Edward reveals to Crozier around a swallow, opening his eyes once again. “But I’d rather it had been you.”_ _

__He sees Crozier wince then, further evidence that he does not want any recollection of what he once was. Edward wants something, it seems, that’s no longer in him._ _

__“Go back up and press down on your poor and wretched neck,” Crozier says, the closest he’s been yet to angry. Close, so close. “Does it hurt?”_ _

__“Yes,” Edward gasps. It does. It’s unholy. “A lot.”_ _

__“Could you choke yourself, do you think? Hold death close in your own hands?”_ _

__“Not properly,” Edward tells him around a harsh breath. A grip of a larger span, is what he needs. A greater power. He won’t do it to himself tightly enough._ _

__“Would you rather I did it?”_ _

__“Yes,” Edward whines. “Please”_ _

__“No,” Crozier tells him clearly. “Not again. I won’t do that.”_ _

__Above all, heat and humiliation rushing through every vessel and vein, Edward wishes for that level of control, or that level of certainty. Perhaps even for some of Crozier’s peace._ _

____

*

“Don’t lose touch,” Crozier tells him once Edward has righted himself. Edward had been the one to turn and face the wall. “Come here whenever you like. We can talk about almost anything.”

Edward nods, but he hears the _almost_. Close is nothing. Edward leaves and returns to his lodgings and lies awake and imagines Crozier building St Gabriel’s himself like he built Edward, built them all before they were gone, remembers Mediterranean warmth and then the Arctic squall; sun-baked skin and cold stone all under the stretch and press of Crozier’s two undamaged hands.

**Author's Note:**

> [Often and often, father, you would appear to me,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QNy0DT96tw)  
> Your sad shade would appear, and that kept me going  
> To this end.


End file.
